


Pandora's Tree

by ThisShitMakesMeHard (Face_of_Poe)



Series: From Helmand to Harlan - Holidays with Tim and Raylan [1]
Category: Justified
Genre: Christmas Tree, Gen, Merry Christmas, and a Happy Solstice, happy holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 12:29:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5248328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Face_of_Poe/pseuds/ThisShitMakesMeHard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Raylan and Tim go to Target, get drunk, and decorate the office Christmas tree. With a smattering of conversation and GTKY'ing thrown in the mix, because to date, all Raylan knows about the office's youngest marshal is that he was a sniper in the Rangers and wanted to shoot his father.<br/>After tonight, he can add to that list: surprisingly adept with holiday decorations, surprisingly hopeless with the internet, and decently crafty, when the occasion calls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pandora's Tree

**Author's Note:**

> This one came about from an OTP prompt on Tumblr ('decorating the Christmas Tree together'), though I guess it should be noted that this isn't a romantic pairing. 
> 
> Set anywhere vaguely after episode 2.4 (when they talk about shooting fathers). We'll just call it Raylan's first Christmas in Lexington. Because trying to figure out the passage of time (or the time of year) on Justified is something of a hopeless endeavor, far as I can tell.
> 
> All religious commentary is made by jaded, cynical characters and is not intended to offend.

“Oh my God.” Raylan’s head dropped in defeat; he’d known there was no way he’d get through this without getting caught in the act. “What – the hell – are you doing?”

Had he compiled a potential guest list for the occasion, however, he’d have likely put Tim Gutterson at the bottom of it. “What does it look like?” he grumbled. 

“It looks like Santa _is_ real,” Tim finally walked through the doorway into the Marshals Office and came to inspect Raylan’s (admittedly pitiful) progress. “Raylan Givens, decorating the office for the holidays. I know it’s _my_ wish-come-true.”

“Art’s becoming even more sadistic in his punishment details in his old age.” He wrestled a plastic blue bulb onto a branch of the tree, cursed when the thread snapped, and tossed the offending ornament into a steadily growing pile that had met a similar fate. Tim circled the tree and tweaked a few of the fake branches, filling the holes Raylan hadn’t cared to fix. “Apparently he’s too twitchy when I’m out in the wild to even send me on a traditional post-fuck-up prison transpo.”

Tim made a few more adjustments. “Oh, is that why I’m getting back from Big Sandy at seven o’clock on a Friday?” Raylan shrugged noncommittally and hung another ornament, successful this time. “Dude,” Tim yanked it back off and ignored Raylan’s sputtering objections. “Dude. Stop. You’re fucking this up.”

“If Art wanted pretty, he woulda put someone else on it.”

“Fair,” Tim allowed. “But I’m here now, so. First things first – you got a _fake_ tree?”

“Dunlop’s allergic, or some shit. I guess he complained last year.”

He looked reluctantly accepting. “I don’t remember a tree last year. Did we even have a tree? This is a federal courthouse, are we even allowed to have a tree? Do we have to call it a _holiday tree_ like the White House?”

“Ah,” Raylan held up a finger. “That’s an urban legend. I Snopes’d it. Plus, there’s like, eight trees between the parking lot and the fourth floor.”

“Really.”

“Yep.”

“The fuck is Snopes?”

Raylan pulled out his phone. “Do you even internet?”

“Second,” Tim ignored him, “you’re putting it all together backwards. Ornaments go on _last_.”

“Who made you the authority on Christmas tree decorating?”

Tim leveled a steady glare at him. “My dead mother, asshole.”

“…Sorry.”

“ _Third_ ,” Tim looked around the floor beside them and under the tree, “where’s the rest of it?” Raylan blinked. “Lights? Tinsel?’

“Oh.” Raylan snagged a bag from Nelson’s desk. “I got lights.” _The fuck is tinsel_? he asked silently, unwilling to risk further condescension towards his holiday ineptitude from the younger marshal.

Too late. “You got _one_ box of lights. Jesus Christ, Raylan, it even gives you a little cheat sheet on the back for the size of your tree.” He looked the tree over, judging its height, and then glanced at the box. “Also, you got colored lights,” he grimaced. “White lights are better.”

“Racist.”

“C’mon,” Tim threw the box back into the bag, “let’s go.” Raylan gestured haltingly towards his box of cheap ornaments he was halfway through hanging. “Fuck those,” Tim dismissed derisively. “We’re getting better ones. And tinsel. And – for fuck’s sake, Raylan,” he glanced down at the ornaments, “did you even get a star or an angel or something for the top?” 

Raylan backed away, hands raised. “It looks like you’ve got this under control. Why don’t I just-”

“Drive us back to,” he glanced at the distinctive bag in his hands, “Target, so we can return these and get better ones?” Raylan sighed. “You got somewhere better to be?” At least one idea came to mind, but Tim read him easily enough. “We’ll pick up a bottle on the way back.”

He grabbed his coat. “After you, then.” 

Tim stopped after a step back towards the door, turned back, unclipped the marshals star from his hip and leaned up on tip-toes to pin it to the top of the tree. “Let’s try not to encounter any fugitives while we’re gone.”

He used Raylan’s phone to read up on Snopes on their way to the store.

 

X---X

 

The young girl at the customer service desk looked bored as Raylan handed over the offending box of lights and asked for a refund. “They not work?”

“Work fine, far’s I know,” Raylan nodded to her, then tipped his head in Tim’s direction, lurking in the background, arms crossed. “My partner here deemed them inadequate.”

He could practically feel the burn of Tim’s stare into the back of his head as the girl’s gaze bounced between them twice and a grin pulled at the corner of her mouth. “Well, that’s fine then. I hope you gentlemen find something that works better for you.”

“Oh,” Tim drew up alongside Raylan and slung an arm around his waist, “I’m sure we will. This one here – good thing he’s pretty to look at because he can’t decorate for shit.”

“Mine’s like that, too,” she commiserated in a stage-whisper. “Good luck with your Christmas shopping!”

Tim yanked his arm back but Raylan snagged his wrist and held him in place as he dolefully informed the girl, “Solstice, actually. We don’t celebrate Christmas anymore, just don’t feel right, you know.” He paused for effect. “Since the excommunication.”

He overplayed his hand though, and his attempt to mortify the forever impassive Tim turned into a five minute earnest plea for them to forget those who would cast stones, and find the right church that would accept them as they were, so long as they accepted Jesus into their hearts.

Tim had to step outside after they finally escaped so he could laugh without offending the unsuspecting clerk. He found Raylan back in the holiday décor section, feeling just as lost as he had three hours earlier when Art had sent him on this fool’s errand. Tim mostly ignored him, ducking between a few aisles and grabbing lights, some shiny, stringy streamer stuff (“Jesus Christ, Raylan, it’s _tinsel_ ”) that promised to be a hellish mess, and a carefully selected silver tree-topper star which Raylan thought looked a bit boring but Tim adamantly insisted upon.

He tried to put his foot down when he found Tim studying the selection of tree skirts (“it’s warm inside, what’s it need a skirt for?”), but Tim summarily ignored his advice until he was picking up a box of real glass ornaments and Raylan reminded him, “Nelson’s going to walk past that tree every single time he comes and goes from his desk,” and Tim put them hastily back again.

“You got a budget for this little project?” Tim asked a bit belatedly as they were waiting in line to check out.

“Art was a bit vague on that account.”

“Probably because he knew you’d buy one string of lights and the cheapest box of ornaments you could find, then make Laurie go out and do the thing proper come Monday.”

“Probably.”

 

X---X

 

After a quick stop for bourbon, they hauled their spoils upstairs, had a mouthful apiece to _get in the spirit_ (“ahh, punny”), and got to work. Which mostly consisted of Tim doing all the work, while Raylan opened packages at Tim’s order and handed him things. He occasionally provided a _here, hold this_ service while Tim carefully strung the new lights from the top down, but then found himself sitting idly when Tim moved along to the tinsel.

He wasn’t idle long, remembered the bourbon, and poured them each another small cup. “S’too quiet,” he remarked after passing Tim his bourbon in his Army Rangers mug. “Music? Did we get music?”

“Sure, and Judge Reardon is going to be Santa. Can put some white trim on his speedo.”

“Can Vasquez be his elfin helper?” Tim snickered into his mug. “I’ll find something on Pandora.”

“The _fuck_ is Pandora?”

Raylan found a pleasant enough assortment of Christmas music and set his phone on Nelson’s desk. “Are you familiar with the internet, Tim? Like, at all?”

“Says the man who probably had to write college essays on a typewriter.”

“But I have _adapted_ with the times, being the salient point.”

“I have adapted just fine, thank you. Being in the Army is like, one big exercise in adaptation. Go here. Or there, actually. Go halfway around the world and shoot some people. Get a new boss and adapt to fit his expectations, then do it all over again in a year or less.” Raylan bit his tongue, sensing he might have hit some nerve, however accidental. But then Tim followed it up with a quiet, “I use Skype.”

“Well, there we go.”

“Here,” Tim moved away from the side of the tree he’d been working on. “Start hanging ornaments.” Raylan stood from his perch on the desk and came around to admire Tim’s handiwork. It did actually look very nice. “Space them apart. But don’t look like you’re trying to space them apart.”

_What?_ “Fly casual?” 

“You’re an exercise in contradiction, old man.”

Raylan grumbled and set about hanging the new ornaments, careful not to dislodge the carefully draped lights and the endless strands of tinsel. From his new vantage point positioned a third around the tree from Tim, he could see the younger man’s face as he worked, and it occurred at last that this wasn’t something Tim was doing because he _could_ do a better job than Raylan. He enjoyed it. It wasn’t even so much that he looked _happy_ as he did relaxed, open, maybe a touch reminiscent. Perhaps it was therapeutic.

When Tim caught him staring and raised a cool brow, Raylan asked, “When’s the last time you got to do this?”

He shrugged, his usual stoic demeanor slipping back. “If we were stateside at the right time o’year, there’d usually be a guy or two looking for a buddy to get drunk with and help string the outside lights. In that order,” he added after a moment’s consideration.

“Because nothing says _Merry Christmas_ like falling off your buddy’s roof in the quest to outshine the neighbors. Hey,” he brightened, “have you seen the video on Youtube with the… never mind. Do you decorate at home?”

The look Tim gave him suggested he thought Raylan was fucking with him, and he replied slowly, “I’ve spent Christmas the last three years here, here, and Afghanistan, so… no.”

Raylan retreated from the weird tone the conversation had taken. Deeming the section of the tree he’d been allotted to be adequate, pending Tim’s inspection, he returned to the bourbon on Nelson’s desk and offered another drink. Tim held out the mug silently.

Being Raylan though, he could only go so long without talking, even with the music playing softly from his phone. “One Christmas from my childhood always stood out,” he mused. “Arlo was in jail, and I said that maybe instead of bringing me something I wanted, Santa took something I hated, so it evened out.” He grinned, thinking back fondly. “Aunt Helen popped me in the mouth for being mean-spirited on Christmas, told me not to say that in front of my mama, but I caught her smiling when she thought I wasn’t looking.”

“Good woman.”

“Folks at church were always pleased when Arlo was _away_ , too, even if they never outright said it. Mama would smile. I got to play with the other kids. Had a potluck sort of lunch that Christmas, bunch of us snuck out and got my nice clothes all muddied up in the woods behind the property, didn’t even get a lecture. Arlo’d a’knocked me on my ass.”

Tim moved on to the last section of tree, and Raylan went back to hanging ornaments. “Tryin’ to picture Raylan Givens at church.” Tim grinned drily. “You a God-fearin’ man, Raylan?”

“Don’t know so much about _fearin’_ ,” he countered easily, “but I do like to think there’s something out there. Keepin’ score, settlin’ accounts. You a God-fearin’ man, Tim?”

“Nah,” he shook his head, eyes fixed steadily on his handiwork. “Broke up with my God some time ago.”

It occurs, as he asks, that it’s a very personal question, but the bourbon wrecks his inner filter and so he says, “Why’s that?”

Tim’s eyes slid sideways a moment to meet his. “Oh. You know.”

“No,” Raylan’s brow furrowed. “I don’t. I know shit about you, Gutterson. I think the sum of my knowledge of your life outside this office is that you were a sniper in the Rangers, that you wished you could’ve shot your father, and your mother decorated Christmas trees with you. And you Skype.”

“Do you think the world’s fucked up because of your God, or despite him?”

Raylan blinked owlishly at him a few times. “Well. I guess I come to figure it more along the _free will_ line of things and less the _predestination_ line of things, so… despite, I suppose.”

“Really exercising those old academia muscles, ain’t ya?”                                                                                                              

“Yeah, how am I doing?”

“Fuck if I know,” Tim drawled. “I grew up in the sorta place where the only parts that mattered were the _spare the rod_ bit and the one about _lying with another man_. Where Catholics ain’t real Christians and the only thing worse’n that are folk who believe nothin’ at all.”

“What about, say, Buddhists?”

“Never met one of those ‘til the Army. Little bit of everything in the Army but they still tack a prayer on the beginning and end of every big occasion.”

“And you’re worried about _holiday trees_.” Tim smiled faintly. “I went to Mass for Christmas and Easter for six long years while married,” Raylan poured another short drink. “Never seemed a good fit.”

Tim nodded sagely, accepted his mug back. “You need a healthy share of shame and guilt for that, and I suspect you have neither.”

“Also, I really, really like birth control.”

“I should hope.”

“Any little Tims running around out in the wide world?” Tim choked and coughed. “See – this is how pitifully little I know about you. Could be married for all I know, forego the ring.”

“Does it matter?”

Raylan hesitated at the confrontational tone his coworker was taking. “’Course not. Just, you know. Tryin’ to get to know my colleagues.”

“I prefer a life shrouded in mystery.”

“Is Deputy Gutterson the superhero version, but you actually lead a very dull life as a journalist when you’re home?”

“Maybe I’m a rich playboy with a badass British butler waiting on me in my mansion.”

Raylan tipped his cup to him. “I vote that one, if you invite me over once in a while.”

They lapsed into a somewhat easier silence while Tim finished hanging tinsel. While Raylan was putting on the rest of the ornaments, Tim retreated to his desk and pulled out the star for the top of the tree and a package of construction paper he’d picked up when Raylan wasn’t paying attention at the store. He sorted through it until he found a grey sheet, threw the rest in his desk, and lay the star down. “You got a compass?” Raylan stared dully. “Right.”

He set to carefully connecting the points of the star in a series of arcs. Then he removed the star and began drawing a larger circle encompassing the smaller one, and Raylan finally realized what he was doing and laughed. “I liked having yours up there.”

“Might need mine from time to time.”

Resuming his role as assistant, Raylan fetched him scissors, tape, and a permanent marker, which Tim used to write _U.S. Marshals Service_ around one side of the band. On the other side, he wrote _Merry Christmas and/or Happy Solstice_. And then he cut out the grey ring and diligently taped it to the points of the silver star, creating an approximate likeness of their marshal badges.

“Very equal opportunity and culturally sensitive in our modern pluralistic society.”

“You get that out of the employee handbook?”

“…Maybe?”

And while Tim was reaching up to replace the temporary placeholder with the newly-crafted holiday badge, not bothering to ask for Raylan’s superior height in the endeavor, Raylan chuckled softly, thinking back on their encounter with the customer service girl at Target, and then finally pieced together what Tim had been telling him. “ _Shit_.” Tim looked over at him. “I’m an asshole, ain’t I?” He cocked a curious brow. “The shit with the girl at the store… I didn’t know -”

“I know,” Tim cut him off firmly. “Well, I know now.”

“The excommunication crack seems in exquisitely poor taste, in retrospect.”

Tim waved him off. “Nah. We might’a broke up when I was a teenager, but my first deployment made me realize I was just clinging to an imaginary friend.”

Raylan fought back the inclination to probe for further details. It was the first time, however, that it really struck him that Tim Gutterson managed to simultaneously be the youngest and oldest person in the office.

After edging the tree into the nook near Nelson’s desk, Tim plugged in the lights and added the finishing touch, and even Raylan had to admit that the tree skirt really pulled the whole thing together. “It’s empty,” Tim studied it with a discerning eye. “Maybe we can get some paper, empty boxes, see if Laurie’ll wrap ‘em.”

“Sexist.”

“Nope, just can’t wrap presents for shit. Can you? S’what I thought.”

It would be a downright shame to have sloppy gifts under the work of art that was that tree.

 

They took the music and the bourbon and retreated to the couch in Art’s office where they sprawled at either end, Raylan with his feet propped up on a chair dragged over from the desk and Tim somehow managing to still look stiff and professional with his legs stretched out lazily and his Ranger mug of bourbon in hand.

Raylan supposed he must have done something right though, or maybe it was just the substantial quantity of bourbon already in his veins, but Tim lightened up a little and answered the question Raylan really had been asking earlier. “Last time I helped my mom put up a Christmas tree was probably about the time you were writing your last college finals on that typewriter, old man.” Raylan shot him a dirty look. “I was twelve. She died the next spring.”

“M’sorry. She sick?”

“Mostly she was just unhappy.” And he moved quickly away from that. “Thought I’d have to go get a degree, put that GI bill to good use, in order to make my way in the civilian world.”

“Before you realized multiple law enforcement agencies would cream themselves to get hold of someone with your skills and experience?”

Tim snorted into his mug. “Basically, yes. Which was good, because that shit would have been terrible.”

“From war to English 101, with love.”

“Bestselling memoir; lost opportunity.” He studied his mug a moment, thinking. “From Helmand to Harlan.”

“Catchy.”

“You can write the forward. Seein’ as I never set foot in Harlan ‘til you got here.”

 

They chatted their way through some relatively innocuous topics and entirely too much of the bourbon, until it finally occurred to Raylan that neither of them was in any condition to get themselves home.

Tim shrugged. “Call a cab.”

He nodded, raised his cup back to his lips, then straightened with a grin and set it back down. “I got a better idea.” Seizing his phone from the floor, he finally turned off the music and pulled up his contacts. It rang twice before a very perturbed voice answered.

“Raylan, before you open your mouth, I want you think _very_ hard about the fact that it’s a Friday night and I spent the last one of those cleaning up one of your messes.”

“I need your help, Art.”

A long-suffering sigh carried very well over the phone. “With _what_?" 

“The tree.”

“Jesus Christ, Raylan, what time is it?” Pause. “I put you on that six _hours_ ago.”

“I think I did it wrong. I need your help.”

“It’ll keep ‘til Monday.”

“I’m going to shoot it, Art.”

There was a longer pause that time. “Are you drunk?”

“…Maybe.”

A flurry of cursing ensued, some muffled discussion during which Art clearly had his hand over the speaker. “Leslie likes you more than I do.”

“Well, obviously.”

“We’ll be there in fifteen. Don’t shoot anything in the meantime.”

 

 

Art and Leslie walked in seventeen minutes and sixteen seconds later, per Tim’s countdown. Tim and Raylan didn’t bother getting up from the couch, feeling lazily content to listen to the delighted exclamations of Leslie interspersed with Art’s colorful swearing as he worked his way back to his office. “You better not be in my good stash, asshole.” He hovered in the doorway and eyed the pair of them, momentarily lost for words. “I feel like I’m on _Punk’d_.”

“The _fuck_ is P-”

Raylan slapped a hand over Tim’s mouth. Which he promptly bit. “Ow.”

“Do I even want to know?” Art sighed, and accepted the plastic cup with a splash of bourbon Tim had sitting at the ready and handed his way.

“Deputy Gutterson and I had a very productive evening, by which I mean Tim told me what to do, and I occasionally listened and obliged.”

“In between calling me a racist, sexist apostate.”

Art shrugged, resigned, like it was just another day in the office.

“Add _rabid_ to the list,” Raylan commented dourly, inspecting his hand. “Fuck, Gutterson.” He brightened though, and raised his cup in a cheer towards his boss. “The basic takeaway you should be getting here, though, is that Deputy Gutterson is your man for all future holiday decorating endeavors.”

“Nah, I’ll just keep assigning it as punishment detail and put you in the position of asking for his help.”

“Art,” Raylan leaned forward, held his eyes seriously, “if I’m still here for another Christmas or more, I am _seriously_ doing it wrong.”

And before that could dissolve into any sort of offense or argument about Raylan’s reluctant tenure in Kentucky, Tim asked blandly, “Can you and Missus Mullen drive us home? We’re drunk.”

So they did, Tim laughing delightedly the whole way as he watched Youtube videos on Raylan’s phone of elaborate house light displays set on timers to Christmas music. “I am buying a house,” he declared. “I am buying a house, just so I can do this shit.”

“Maybe sober up before you sign anything,” Leslie advised from the front seat.

They dropped Tim off first. Raylan watched him meander up the walk to a mid-sized apartment complex and disappear into the first unit off the walkway, feeling like he’d started to get a small peek behind the rigid mask of his fellow deputy. And while he still wouldn’t say he knew him _well_ , by any stretch of the imagination, he now knew one other thing: where he lived.

 

And so come Sunday morning, he found himself smiling brightly into Tim’s unimpressed face as he stood at the door, bouncing back and forth on his feet in a futile effort to keep warm. “Put your coat on, let’s go.” Tim blinked once, twice. “Should probably take your truck, though.”

The speed with which the younger marshal resigned himself to whatever little adventure Raylan cooked up made him wonder if he trusted him that much, or was simply that bored. “Where we headed?” he asked as he climbed into the vehicle he must have retrieved from the courthouse the day prior.

“Church.” Tim’s stare drilled into the side of his face, and he gestured impatiently. “Just drive.”

He did, at Raylan’s direction, and Raylan only got them turned around once on their way to the outskirts of the city. The signs made it obvious where Raylan was taking them a couple minutes before they arrived, but Tim still shook his head and bit his lip, looking down to hide the smile once he’d parked the car at the Christmas tree farm.

As they watched a young man come trotting up to them through the endless rows of evergreens, Tim murmured over to Raylan, “I ain’t lettin’ you anywhere near a saw, understand.”

“Just go pick out a tree, asshole.”

 

X---X


End file.
